The present invention relates to a new and improved method of, and apparatus for, processing flat products, especially printed products and preferably folded printed products, arriving in an imbricated product formation or array.
In its more specific aspects, the invention relates . to a new and improved method of, and apparatus for, processing flat products, especially printed products, preferably folded printed products, arriving in an imbricated product formation in which the products are wound-up to form a product package.
While the description to follow, as a matter of convenience, refers to the processing of printed products, obviously other types of products can be conveniently handled, and therefore, the use of this term is not to be construed in a limiting sense in any way whatsoever, merely it is to be viewed as an exemplary and desirable field of application for the inventive measures.
It is known, for example, from German Patent Publication No. 3,123,888 and the cognate British Patent Publication No. 2,081,230, to input the printed products arriving in an imbricated product formation from below to a winding core and to wind-up the same thereon. In principle, compact product packages having considerable diameters can be formed in this manner without any damage to the printed products.
However, when the imbricated product formation to be wound-up is formed such that each product therein rests upon a successive product, i.e. the leading edge of the printed products is positioned on the bottom side of the imbricated product formation, there exists the danger in the case of large diameter product packages that the printed products present in the innermost layers of the product package can become displaced by slipping. Consquently, such printed products may become damaged or at least deformed to such an extent that further mechanical or automatic processing of such products is made more difficult or even becomes impossible. Above all, such problem exists when the imbricated product formation originally contained the products with their leading edges on top and such product formation has been wound-up into a first product package which subsequently is rewound to form a second product package as described, for example, in German Patent Publication No. 3,151,860 and the cognate British Patent Publication No. 2,092,557.